Oh, okay, it’s only been 4 months~
No but really I need to remember when I start things and actually follow through with them. That’s one of my goals for the next couple of years, so I’ll try to remember to blog here.
So I got into a conversation with a friend about various things, and it got me looking up the history of Unitarianism and Universalism and stuff, so I thought I’d come and write a ~brief~ summary here.
The Unitarians (according to Wikipedia) historically didn’t believe in the Holy Trinity, they didn’t think Jesus was God, but rather was somewhere higher than human but still lesser than God. Um but the most important part about the history of Unitarianism is that they didn’t believe in dogmas or creeds or other Christian doctrines like Original Sin, Predestination, or any of that other stuff. They believed that the only way to get to heaven was through ~righteous acts~, not only through faith. They became a formal denomination in the early 1800s (the UU Church of Wakefield, where I grew up, started in 1813). They also had a lot of awesome members, like Thoreau and Emerson and Susan B Anthony and Florence Nightingale, the Adams, and so on.
The Universalists were a Protestant movement who believed that everyone would be saved by God because he was so forgiving and gracious. Even if someone didn’t believe or even if they were bad people, he’d still save them (eventually, periods of redemption in Hell weren’t out of the question) cause he loved them anyways and he was just that cool. As an American denomination they got their start earlier than Unitarians, spreading throughout the mid-1700s with the first general convention in 1778. They were also a lot smaller than the Unitarians, the only ~notable Unitarian~ I recognized immediately from the Wiki list is P.T. Barnum. I guess that’s cool.
Both movements grew to be pretty similar and had a lot of shared beliefs, and both had starting accepting members who had widely differing beliefs, but the two denominations didn’t combine until the 1960s, which is why we’re under the creative name of Unitarian Universalism. Since then the Unitarian Universalist Association has been the main force in the growth of the religion. Modern mainstream UUism is not very Christian at all, and a large portion isn’t really into God either. This is a bit rectified by a sub-organization called the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship, which is made up of UUA member churches who still believe in God and Jesus and those sorts of things. Most Unitarian/UU churches overseas are Unitarian Christian, though they’re still affiliated with the ICUU (International Council of Unitarians and Universalists).
There are three beliefs that I can see in this abbreviated summary that we inherited directly from our ~forefather denominations~, imo. First is the Universalist belief that God loves and will save everyone regardless of beliefs or actions. To me, that is a very UU thing to believe (even if you don’t believe in God, the equality and worth of each human being is something fundamentally UU). The second thing is the Unitarian disregard for dogma, creed, etc. Spirituality is a very personal thing and dogma in any form is abhorred. Worships, sermons, religious education, all of these things are aimed at getting you thinking about spirituality, but what you actually decide and what you actually believe ought to be your own decision. Finally, the Unitarian belief in righteous acts. Even when we don’t believe in heaven/salvation at all, we still place a lot of emphasis on doing good deeds and treating other people well and striving to be a good person. It’s sort of an “actions speak louder than words” thing.
